


Nothing but history

by josephides



Series: Vis unita fortiori [2]
Category: Alpha and Omega - Patricia Briggs, Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs
Genre: A History of Werewolf America, Domestic Fluff, Everyone does have a tragic backstory even if they don't know it, F/M, For the record having babies doesn't fix a relationship, Romance, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:01:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25527874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephides/pseuds/josephides
Summary: “My father was a werewolf. A lone wolf. He was originally from Britain, though I don't know where. Or even when. Or," she laughed, "his surname. My mother died when I was very young – I don’t remember her much, either."
Relationships: Bran Cornick/Leah Cornick
Series: Vis unita fortiori [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1850122
Comments: 11
Kudos: 274





	Nothing but history

**Author's Note:**

> And we have a POV change!
> 
> Note - I've increased the rating because this is a wee bit racier, to my mind, than the last one. Boys, eh?

On the second day of their journey to see Domingo, they lost signal and Bran ecstatically turned off his cell phone. They still had the satellite phone – there was no chance Leah was going to risk being out of communication from those looking after the baby – but the immediate press of text messages, phone calls, voicemails and emails was removed from Bran’s shoulders. 

Once, his people could only contact him by letter. Perhaps a visit, if they knew where the Marrok lived. Maybe even a poorly timed telegram. He had known, as soon as the phone line was installed, what this change would mean for him. That his time, his focus, would no longer be his own. Phone calls through the day and the night, interrupting anything and everything, regardless of priority. If he left the house and returned, it was to an answer-machine of messages. _Marrok, I’m sorry to bother you but…_

Shortly after the phone line came the internet. Email. Cell phones and all that entailed. Bran could now be accessible twenty-four hours a day, wherever he was, whatever he was doing.

For most of the Twentieth Century, Bran’s focus had almost entirely been on protecting their privacy. Human technology inevitably made that impossible and he had made the decision to take some werewolves public. He now worked within an intricate web of werewolf, Other and human matters, trying to maintain a delicate balance. If he addressed just one gossamer string of that web, he did it knowing it had the potential to have repercussions on his people that would reverberate for decades, if not centuries. Those decisions, that knowledge, weighed on him and him alone.

“You look better,” Leah commented, thoughtfully which Bran supposed meant that he had been looking tired.

She had just returned from bathing in the river and stood naked before their fire, drying her hair with a microfiber towel. In much the same way as she studied him, he in turn looked his fill. Bran admired her strong legs, her taught stomach, the inviting curve of her breasts. There were droplets of water glistening in the weak sunlight on the curls at the apex of her thighs.

His mate smiled, an innate female smile, and folded the towel. “Is _that_ why you haven’t put the tent away?”

Bran nodded and smiled. He had watched her go to the river, knowing he would want her again when she returned. And that he would have her. No pack, no baby, no day-to-day life to distract them – just their bodies coming together to their mutual satisfaction. He beckoned her towards him. “Come here.”

On two feet, it was only a couple of days’ trek to their destination, another eight hours of more inaccessible terrain on four. Out of politeness, to allow their quarry plenty of time to observe them entering his territory and see that they were peaceful, Bran had planned this journey to allow an extra day, which had turned into an additional two days.

He supposed it might be called a vacation. Improbable as it seemed, it was only the second time Bran and Leah had been truly alone together away from home for a significant period of time. The last was when they had made the journey back from the Great Plains pack after they had first mated. It had been no means as harmonious. But now that their relationship had entered this new phase, to give the last few months a label that encapsulated the monumental shift that it felt like, their time together was restrained by their responsibilities as new parents, as the Alpha pair of the Aspen Creek pack, and his as the Marrok.

Here, now, they just had each other. They lingered over meals, slept in, talked late, touched each other freely. 

Bran, and the beast inside Bran, had always desired Leah. From the moment he had seen her, he’d felt a powerful lust for her – not challenged by what he had perceived as negative personality traits. The human part of him thought her selfish. Stupid or, at least, with no desire to better herself. In his urgency to make her his, to solve his problem, he had looked no deeper than that and then strove not to in the decades that followed.

He could easily lust and not love, he told himself. He could enjoy her body and not need to touch her face when she was happy, not hold her when he made her cry.

Now it felt like Bran had lied to himself for a very long time.

That morning, contentment had him taking his time with her, enjoying her, bringing her to climax twice so he could relish the flush in her cheeks, hear the small noises she made helplessly as he slowly entered her. She was passive under him, allowing him to take control, to maneuver her where he wanted her. They were wound tightly together, faces pressed millimeters apart, moving in small, sinuous increments when he came with a rush of sheer, mind-numbing relief.

She kissed him, softly, crossed her legs behind his back, and held him close. “We both need to wash. Again,” she murmured, her mouth pressed to the corner of his.

He rolled them over, a bit of a squeeze in their tent and nuzzled her neck, licking her skin as their bodies trembled. “Mmm,” he thought. Or perhaps he would prefer it if she smelled like him all day.

After a moment, Leah sat up astride him, delicately parting them, and eyed him suspiciously. “Are you going back to sleep?”

He was. Bran sighed and stretched, looked up at his wife. The dappled light through the tent cast her face into shadow, her damp hair now tangled around her face and over her shoulders, over her breasts. It was still long, having been given extra incentive to grow during her pregnancy. “Just enjoying the view.”

“I see.” Her expression flickered between confusion and pleasure, almost shyness. She still didn’t know what to think when he said things like that to her.

Leah lay back down next to him, hooked a leg over his as if anchoring him in place, then draped an arm over his waist. “You’re in a very good mood.”

He put his arms under his head. The beast within was languorously content and so was he. “I am.”

They lay quietly for a while, listening to the sounds of the birds and the river rushing by. Bran might have dozed off, just a little bit, woken only when Leah sat up to get a protein bar.

“You know, if we were planning on testing my newfound skill set, this would be the right time in my cycle to do that,” she said thoughtfully, breaking off half and handing it to him.

He traced a finger down her spine, the other hand holding the protein bar that he munched with little enjoyment. “I know.”

She looked back at him in surprise, as if the rhythms of her very consistent body weren’t something he had ever needed to understand. “You do?”

“Yes.”

“Bran Cornick, do you not think that _trying_ to get me pregnant is something you should have discussed with me beforehand?”

“I don’t think it’ll work,” he said confidently.

Leah rolled her eyes. “And what if it had?”

Bran smiled, still confident. “I _really_ don’t think it’ll work.”

His wife licked a crumb from her finger and turned to crawl over him, breasts bouncing tantalizingly. Bran felt his smile broaden. “And what if it had,” she said, threateningly.

He pretended to think about it. “Then we’d definitely have to do the loft extension.”

During the subsequent wrestling, where she called him a variety of colorful names, the tent fell down on top of them and Bran laughed so hard his ribs hurt. He carried her down to the river where she resentfully splashed herself, and him, with water.

Packing up the camp site, Bran still periodically found himself chuckling, even more so when Leah gave him filthy looks.

“We’re doing the loft extension, anyway,” Leah told him, re-plaiting her hair.

She could have asked for anything at that point and he would have given it to her. “As you wish.”

*

Leah bounded ahead of him on four legs, leaving Bran in no doubt that the joy she had of rediscovering her wolf form was still present, five months after the baby’s birth. She nipped him, playfully, and he let her. Sensitive that they were in the long-held territory of an old wolf, she didn’t stray far and they travelled fast.

The first hint that they were approaching his domain were the wind chimes.

Puzzled, Leah sat beneath one, tilting her silver-and-gold head to the side to study it.

 _I think it’s purely decorative,_ Bran told her. It wouldn’t serve as a security mechanic, since the wind would make the noise as much as a passing animal or human. _If anything it just marks where he thinks his territory begins._

Leah took him at his word and trotted on. Bran gave the wind chime a passing sniff, to see if he could sense any magic, and when he couldn’t he pressed forward.

Domingo wasn’t the first of the pack that had once roamed the Great Plains that they had visited in the search for information. He was the most difficult to reach, however, and the only lone wolf. For the most part, he had done little in his life to garner Bran’s attention – enough for him to know his name, where he had come from. He had flitted from pack to pack for a while before settling in the last few decades into his lone wolf status.

Leah didn’t recall but that was because his mate, though female, had been very dominant. If she had known the names of anyone lower than the top ten males of the Willet’s pack, Bran would have been shocked. Leah had scoffed at this, as if it couldn’t possibly be true, but he knew his mate well. 

Something caught Leah’s attention and she froze, a flick of her tail indicating that Bran should do so as well.

He lowered himself to the ground. Nothing big, he thought, ears pricked. A rabbit, perhaps.

Bran waited, content for Leah to exercise one of her favorite pastimes, instead taking the time to enjoy listening to the woods around them. He loved observing the natural rhythms of different ecosystems. The flora and fauna – the chittering of squirrels, the rustle of the trees moving in a breeze, the noises of the birds that shot up in a cacophony of alerts when Leah made her move through the bushes to the west, out of Bran’s eye. She returned, a plump rabbit in her maw. She dropped it in front of him and then rolled onto her back, happily. He could all but hear her say _Look, once again, I provided a meal._

Actually, he realized with a jolt, he _did_ hear her say that.

 _What a treat,_ he told her, in the way he usually did when speaking in one direction to one of his wolves.

 _Tuck in_ , she said. _That old wolf has been following us for the last ten miles so I can only assume we’re close_.

They ate what amounted to a small snack for an adult wolf, Bran puzzling through this new information whilst he did so. Something had shifted for her to be able to speak to him. His hold on their bond was as it ever was, so it wasn’t something he had done. But their bond was tricky, as she put it. It had manifested an avatar to communicate with her when neither Bran or the beast inside of him could or would. Sometimes she stepped into his dreams

He decided not to get distracted. She was right. Domingo had been following them for some time and he had faith that she sensed him first. Whilst the more magical rhythms of the earth came to him more easily, Leah’s natural senses were better than his in wolf form.

 _Only another few miles north,_ he told her.

She didn’t reply; likely because she didn’t think he could hear her. They left the unappetizing remains behind for the vermin and continued on.

*

They waited for Domingo to appear, sat on their haunches outside a small cabin. The sun was just beginning to set and with his wolf’s eyes he could see the sky turning from a pale blue to grey. He imagined it was a spectacular color. He wished Domingo would hurry up so he could see it as a human.

Finally, a small grey wolf with a white muzzle trotted through the thicket. As he got closer, he began to lower himself until he was slunk down in obeisance, almost dragging himself along the dirt and grass.

Leah sighed and slumped down herself, waited for Bran to deal with this ritual of submission. All of the wolves in Northern America recognized Bran.

 _It is good to see you, Domingo. We come in peace. My mate and I have a few questions for you,_ Bran told him, keeping himself small and quiet.

Domingo’s amber eyes moved to Leah and then back again. His ears were flat against his head. He was nervous. They always were. 

_Go Change, my wolf,_ Bran instructed him, gently. _We will wait._

The little wolf skirted around the cabin – a wide arc away from them - and the noisome sound of a painful Change began out of sight. Leah rolled onto her side, showing Bran her pale-furred belly. He nuzzled her throat and she relaxed, utterly at ease. He laughed at her. He knew in human form he made her afraid, his unnatural power, but in wolf she was fearless. He licked her nose affectionately. _Daft_ , he said to her.

She lolled her tongue at him.

A door opened and closed behind them. There was a rustle and some clanging, the sound of water being poured. The front door of the cabin opened and a small, thin, bearded man came out wearing plain, though modern, clothes. The beard made him look older – perhaps in his forties than in his twenties as he no doubt really looked. “Greetings to you, Bran Cornick, Mrs. Cornick,” he said, in a low voice, hoarse with disuse.

He dropped a bundle of clothes had been holding onto the small raised decking that ran around his home. “I’ll start on some tea.”

Then he went back into his home.

Leah’s tail wagged against the dirt. _I’m excited,_ she told him, thinking he couldn’t hear her. Honest as ever. He wondered for how long she had been talking to him as her wolf, when he couldn’t hear. He wondered what she had told him.

*

The initial half hour didn’t exactly meet Leah’s expectations. Domingo was uncomfortable with two more dominant wolves in his home. Admittedly, due to his isolation, he would have been uncomfortable if they’d only been human.

They sipped tea, Bran keeping his knee against Leah’s so that she didn’t vibrate with the tension he knew she was feeling. Leah didn’t really ‘do’ small talk with strangers, let alone their own pack, so Bran kept up a stream of nonsense. The weather. The landscape. Compliments on the tidiness of the cabin.

Apart from the generator he could hear humming, he’d lived in a cabin very much like it, when he’d first started out as a fur trapper and needed somewhere to hunker down during the worst of the winters. He was almost feeling nostalgic.

He said as much.

“Don’t get any ideas,” Leah muttered into her unsweetened black tea. She drew air in through her back teeth and he sympathized. It was so strong it furred his teeth.

“Oh, I’ve got some honey!” Domingo said, suddenly, standing up and making both of them jump. He froze. “Apologies.”

“No matter,” Bran said, smoothly. “Honey would be lovely. Wouldn’t it?” He rubbed a hand along Leah’s thigh, pushing his palm in hard so that her teeth unclenched.

“Lovely,” she managed.

Bran felt a wave of tenderness for her that he left unchecked. She glanced at him, frowned at what he had let show on his face, and glanced away. Her cheeks flushed.

Domingo held a honey dipper over both their mugs and then found a small, tin spoon for them both to stir that he briefed wiped on his shirt to clean. Bran enjoyed the absurdity of this small ritual so much he had to force himself not to laugh. His mate did not feel the same, her lip was curled. 

“You, ah, had some questions for me, sir,” Domingo said, taking a seat again and folding his hands on his lap.

“We do. You were part of the Great Plains pack, I think?”

“For a while, yes.” Domingo’s grey eyes slide to Leah and away again. “With this one, in fact.”

Leah’s already straight back straightened further. Her face brightened from its earlier dissatisfaction. “You were?”

“Oh yes. We were a big pack, at the time. Nearly fifty wolves.”

Bran’s eyebrows raised. “That large?”

At this, both Leah and Domingo nodded. Bran took a sip of his tea, improved with the honey to be more like a sweetly-flavored tar.

When he had tracked down the Great Plains pack in his search for a suitable mate, he had met with Willet, the then Alpha, who had heavily implied his pack was significantly smaller. Bran hadn’t tasted a lie which was rare enough to need some thought. He wondered what else Willet had lied about.

Bran’s mate was considering Domingo as if trying to place him. “I don’t remember you,” she said, no notion that this might offend the man. She refused to look at Bran, as if in doing so she would confirm his earlier theory.

“Easy to get lost in a pack that size,” Domingo muttered, one hand going to his tin mug, nervously. He flinched and put his hand back on his lap, as if burnt. “I was there when you joined and when you left.”

 _That_ was useful. The last potential informant had only joined the pack just after Leah had left. He’d only had hearsay to repeat, none of it particularly positive, though Leah had felt distinctly proud to hear she had been referred to as a ‘murderous bitch’. Ladies and gentleman, his mate.

“I’m trying to find out more about my background,” Leah told Domingo, bluntly, now she had his measure. “I don’t suppose you knew much about me? Or even my parents? Whilst you were part of the pack?”

Domingo grunted. “Couldn’t miss _you_. Caused a stir.” He flushed red, then, and cast Bran a desperate look that told him precisely what kind of a ‘stir’ Leah had caused and he didn’t want to cause Bran offense.

“I recall it well,” Bran said, drily.

“Well. A young werewolf female.” Domingo shrugged, as if that was all the information they needed. He smiled briefly at Leah, teeth white between the bristles of his dark beard. “Give it to you. Gave as good as you got.” He cleared his throat. “Your parents. Well. Truth to be told, it was me that told your Pa to take you to Willet.”

“You did? How did you know him?”

“I did. Our ships came in to Delaware Bay within two weeks of each other. First werewolf I met in the New World, was your Pa. We travelled in the same circles for a few years, too, before I headed towards the west. Still saw each other. Time to time. Small world back then.”

After this big speech, Domingo took a brave sip of his tea and then quickly put his hand back on his lap again. Bran wondered where he had picked up the habit of thinking keeping his hands out of sight was less threatening. Or if it was just some kind of bastardisation of old-fashioned manners? No-elbows-on-the-table? He pondered this.

Leah’s eyebrows lifted. “I’m surprised I don’t remember you. I would have thought if you’d been that long acquainted with my father, we would have spoken.” She swallowed. “My father didn’t have many friends.”

Domingo scratched his cheek, rasping through the dark beard. “Why would you? Only time I saw you back then, you were almost knee high. And I’m not memorable. More tea?” he asked abruptly, nodding to their almost empty mugs.

“Please,” Bran said, thinking that the activity might keep Domingo distracted from his nerves.

Leah wasn’t so interested. “Knee high? You mean I was a child?” His mate glanced at Bran, her expression conveying her disbelief.

Domingo missed this look as he had risen to pour water from a pitcher into the teakettle, placed it on the single-burner gas stove and lit it. “That’s right.”

“Leah’s father told you he planned for her to be Changed?” Some werewolf parents did. It wasn’t a thought Bran relished, personally. 

The wolf shrugged. “Didn’t need true Changing. You were already half wolf. Just need a bit of a nudge. I figured Willet could do that. He was a strong, _good_ man. That was before, well, we all knew about you,” he admitted, casting a look at Bran.

Bran put a hand on Leah’s knee, halting her decrying his description of herself. “Describe what you mean by half wolf?”

“Well, she sure as fu– beg pardon,” he said nodding apologetically to Leah for his near-curse. “This one wasn’t no normal little human girl. For sure, couldn’t do a full Change but could run faster, jump higher than any child I’d ever raised. Saw in the dark, teeth like daggers. Strong, too. Her Pa knew she was different. S’why he kept you all the way out of town. Moved you around.”

Leah was silent.

Bran supposed it was possible that the old wolf was confused. _Wild_ , he’d always joked of his mate. She could have been a wild little girl, out in the untamed parts of America, no one but her father to teach her. Plenty of children had been raised that way.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Domingo said, as the teakettle whistled. He fetched their mugs, took bags of tea from a little canister. “But I know what I saw. He wouldn’t tell me how it happened. I promised—“ Here, Domingo’s voice broke and he cleared it. “I promised him Willet would take good care of her, when she needed it. Next time I saw you, you were who you are now. A full wolf, if ever there was one.”

Again, there was the grunt. He placed the full mugs on the table with the jar of honey. “Caused quite a stir, you did, Mrs. Cornick.” Then he winked. “Don’t imagine much has changed.”

*

They left Domingo, declining his polite offer that they stay the night. Bran didn’t want to make the wolf more nervous than was necessary.

His mate, who still thought he couldn’t hear her thoughts, was silent as they made their way back to where they had stored their packs. They Changed and she was silent for longer, lost in her own world as she sorted through the information they had received. He was happy to let that continue, nudging her into the right direction when she drifted until they reached a good camp site to stop for a rest.

“Go on,” he told her, patience at an end.

“Well, it sounds like nonsense, of course,” Leah said, snapping their tent into place efficiently.

He waited, picking up a suitable stone to dig out a small pit for their fire. Like Domingo, if she knew he wasn’t looking, she would talk more freely.

“The thing is,” she said, clearing her throat as if she was embarrassed, “there are some things that might make sense.”

Bran went to pick up some branches and kindling for the fire. They’d packed some kindling but they’d been lucky with the weather and there was plenty of dry sticks to choose from. “Like what?”

Leah rolled their bedrolls into the tent, unpacked their sleeping bags. She sighed. “Just. Things. I had a good childhood,” she said, defensively.

The corner of Bran’s mouth twitched. “I know.”

“It was sometimes lonely but I was fine. He was a good father. And I don’t remember _feeling_ abnormal.”

But her father had been a werewolf and if she was stronger, he would have been stronger still. She wouldn’t have anything to compare it to. “What things made sense, Leah?” he prompted, crouching down to build the fire.

“I thought he was a recluse. But now I’m wondering if Domingo was right and he was hiding me. I didn’t have— I wasn’t allowed to have friends. I didn’t go to school. I could have, I could have gone and learnt to read and write and do math. We had to be near people, near enough, to trade, anyway. But we moved every few months, not for any real reason that I can remember but then when I left to join the pack, he moved into the town he was killed in fifty years later.” She stood, facing the sunrise, and he stopped occupying himself so he could watch her. She shook her head, turned her lake-blue eyes on him. Sorrowful. “I don’t remember. It’s so long ago.”

“That’s fine, it’s perfectly normal,” he told her. He barely had to remind himself to offer her comfort; it was beginning to come more naturally to him, when it came to her. She stepped readily into his arms but then she had always done so. “I’ll make you breakfast.”

“Mmm. Freeze dried eggs.”

“And bacon. My specialty.”

She snorted, then laughed. She squeezed and released him. “Thank you.”

*

Bran’s cell blew up, as expected, as soon as the signal returned. Leah leaned over his shoulder to check that there was nothing about the baby, then demanded that she be allowed to make the first phone call home, despite several seemingly urgent requests for Bran’s time.

Regardless, he handed his cell to her and she called Anna. The conversation was brisk, as it always between them, but charmingly maternal. She wasn’t a sentimental mother, which he had anticipated. All she wanted to know was if Lotte was eating and sleeping properly. But she sighed, soulfully, when she hung up and gave the phone back to Bran, an air of wistfulness about her as they continued their hike.

They had delayed the trip because Leah hadn’t wanted to leave the baby when she was so young. He suspected this may have had more to do with her trust in the available babysitters than due to her own natural new-mother attachment. She had watched Anna’s handling of Lotte with eagle eyes for weeks, insisted on ‘practice’ overnight runs, which had been equally reassuring for Bran’s son and daughter-in-law, though Leah wouldn’t have known that. Anna had attended several baby first-aid courses, Charles had told Bran with much amusement, just in case.

He made a few ‘work’ calls, feeling the tension return. Leah nudged his shoulder, sympathetically. “It was a nice vacation,” she said.

“We should do it again.”

“Maybe with a beach view.”

Bran smiled. “Drinks with little umbrellas?”

“ _Coconuts_.”

He put his arm around her shoulders. She wasn’t often silly and he relished it. “Don’t we have a hotel in Hawaii?”

“We do. I’m confident neither of us have ever been there.”

“That’s true.” One of their ‘good investments’. “Funny how no one ever has problems in beach resorts, isn’t it?”

“I’ve frequently thought that. Or I would have wanted to come with you more often.”

The rental car was where they had left it and they tossed their bags into the trunk. Bran opened the passenger door for his mate and she paused before she got inside, chewing her bottom lip. “We should let Sam do the blood tests, shouldn’t we?”

He nodded. His eldest had been pestering them for this, part of his documentation of Leah’s pregnancy. He’d carried out a test when Lotte was a newborn for the more common health conditions but Sam had wanted to do more extensive tests, take more blood. They’d put it off – Leah had found the various vaccinations a fairly traumatizing experience as it was and didn’t want to put Lotte, and herself, through the blood drawing process when she was so small.

But if there was a chance that Lotte’s blood showed up anything ‘abnormal’, they would need to know that now.

*

They arrived home during Lotte’s afternoon nap and Leah managed a brief hello before she ran upstairs to check on her.

“Thank you,” he said to Anna, who was watching Leah disappear up the stairs with a gentle smile. “She’s very grateful. We both are.”

“I know.” And it sounded as if Anna did. “But it was no trouble. Lotte was angelic.”

This sounded hyperbolic to Bran – no baby was ‘angelic’ - but he could appreciate the sentiment for the compliment it was supposed to be. 

Leah didn’t spend too long watching their daughter sleep, instead bounced back downstairs with a big smile. “She looks the same,” she sighed in relief.

“We were gone for less than week,” Bran pointed out.

His mate was embarrassed and Bran regretted his tone immediately. “That’s a long time for a baby,” she replied quietly, which made him feel even worse. She glanced at Anna and deflected her embarrassment, sticking her hands into her back pockets. “What’s that?”

In turn, Anna grew embarrassed herself, as Leah had intended. She held up the white device in her hand, sheepishly. “It’s a baby monitor.”

Bran chuckled. “You’re a werewolf, Anna. You could probably hear her breathing down here if you put effort into it.”

“And don’t think I didn’t do that as well,” Anna said, eyes crinkling as she easily laughed at herself, a self-effacing ability that Leah didn’t quite have. “But this has a little screen, too. See?”

Bran could see Anna had immediately converted Leah, who gazed down at the little image of their daughter rapturously. “It’s such good definition,” Leah gasped. “I can _see_ her breathing.”

“ _Exactly_.”

Bran started to back away. “I don’t think I’m needed for this conversation. I’m going to call Sam,” he told Leah.

She nodded, waving him off, utterly distracted. “What else does it do?”

*

Sam laughed down the phone. “Just to be clear, Da, I’m not going to pick up wolf DNA from Lotte’s blood.”

Bran rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair. He understood a great many things but Sam had a ‘specialty’ that far eclipsed his knowledge and did enjoy lording this over him. “ _I know that_.” He did know that; he had been relieved the first time Sam had told him that a werewolf couldn’t be detected by their human blood. “I’m expecting you to tell me if there’s anything different about Lotte. Anything that might stand out.”

“Because some old wolf said Leah was ‘strong’ when she was a kid?”

Bran was silent, playing back the interview with Domingo, looking at his mannerisms, his speech patterns. Not mad, he thought. Not even that reclusive, judging from the clothes, the tea bags, the generator. Better off than many of their wildlings. He had answered their questions willingly, betraying the usual nervousness of a lone wolf faced with two more dominant wolves, particularly the Marrok and his mate. 

“She’s a normal human baby, Da. But I’m glad you are going to let me do the tests. I’d like to have a detailed medical profile of her, given she’s probably my most precious patient as well as my baby sister.”

Bran smiled, just as he always did when Sam referred to her as that. It had been a long time since Sam had a sister, a long time since Bran had a living daughter.

“Did he say anything else?”

“Not much. He knew her father, well enough at least to recommend Willet’s pack. Did you know it was fifty?”

“The Great Plains pack?”

“Yes.”

“I knew it was large. I thought, perhaps, thirty? I remember... well. I remember when you were ‘negotiating’ for Leah’s hand.” This came out rather strangled, as the ‘negotiations’ had Bran fighting Leah’s various suitors whilst Leah had looked on in a bored fashion wearing the dress she would be married in.

He’d already had her agreement, which had been all that mattered to Bran at the time, forgetting that she belonged to an Alpha and there had apparently been ‘expectations’ amongst the single men in the pack. An outsider coming in and taking one of their few females had been met with poor grace.

In the end, he had bribed Willet, rather than killing every single male in his pack who had stepped forward. The wolf had been proud that his mate was so coveted. He saw it as a sign of her strength.

Their mating had been easy, as his beast had known it would be. After Bran had handed over enough gold to make Sam’s eyes water, they’d consummated the union in the cabin she shared with two human females, mere minutes after Willet’s priest had witnessed their marriage. Bran hadn’t touched a woman since his mate’s death so he couldn’t attest to how much Leah had enjoyed the experience. The bond had snapped into place, so seamless it was like it had already been there. It had hurt Bran, that it had been so easy, that it had covered over the psychosomatic scars left by losing Blue-Jay Woman as if they had never been there.

He had been unkind to Leah, afterwards, he remembered. And then spent most of the journey to Aspen Creek molding their bond into something that would serve his purpose, forcing her out.

He shook away these memories. It was useless to think back on what had been. Everything he had done had been for a reason, a good one, and retrospection didn’t change that.

Sam, too, was musing on the past. “I remember Willet being dominant. But I didn’t think he had it in him to control fifty.”

“He lied to me. I didn’t see it.” Bran grunted and rolled his chair so he could look out of the window. It was raining so he pushed open the window to listen to it.

“Interesting.” Sam sighed. “Well, he’s dead now,” he said cheerfully.

“Too true.”

*

Bran was ‘interviewing’ the latest European migration candidates via video conference calls – a new, painful addition to his life - when he heard Leah return from an activity that smelled like it involved chlorine. He dismissed this and focused on the task at hand.

He admitted, when he put forward this incentive to their European brothers and sisters that he hadn’t anticipated exactly how much paperwork would be involved. Charles had made a not-serious comment about employing a human resources team which he had been mulling over, wondering if there was something in it.

He finished the last call around 6PM and wandered through the house. He found the origin of the smell – a ridiculously tiny baby bathing suit and a two piece that was presumably Leah’s in the laundry room.

“Babies can swim?” he asked her, when he found her in the kitchen preparing Lotte’s pre-bedtime feed. Lotte herself was in the booster chair that sat on the kitchen island, repeatedly bashing the plastic remote control that was her current favorite toy against the side of the chair and saying ‘bubbubb’ over and over. He kissed her cheek, brushed a finger over the feathery blonde hair. 

Leah smiled. “Turtle tots,” she said, which didn’t really explain it adequately enough for Bran. “She loves it.”

There was something in her tone that pricked his ears. “What is it?”

She pulled a face. “It’s stupid.”

“Tell me anyway.”

His mate pouted. “The other mothers don’t like me.” She shook the bottle.

“Then _they’re_ very stupid humans,” he said, defensively.

Her smile was a flicker. “Probably. Do you want to feed her?”

He nodded and pulled Lotte out of her chair. She was dressed in a striped sleepsuit, which was an outfit Bran never failed to think was anything but adorable. The little socked feet killed him.

Leah went to push open the kitchen door and they walked through the house upstairs towards the nursery, which had once been the room she kept her crafts in. He helped her put a compliant Lotte into the strange sleeping bag contraption that was apparently the modern equivalent to swaddling and then he sat in the chair, took the bottle Leah handed him. 

Leah hadn’t been able to breast feed, as Sam had predicted. The first Change after the emergency Caesarean had reverted her body to its pre-pregnancy shape, taking with it the swollen breasts that had been preparing to nurture their child. The following day she had gone for a run and had hit all her fitness targets as if she had never been pregnant in the first place.

A suspicion entered his mind. “You wore the bikini in the laundry,” he said, as Lotte eagerly sucked down the milk. He smiled down at his daughter, whose tiny hands cradled the bottle tightly, entire being focused on mindlessly consuming. He had always enjoyed feeding her, marveled at the difference in size a few months made. When she had been born, he had been able to hold her in one arm. 

Leah occupied herself by tidying the changing table, her back to him. “Yes.”

It hadn’t been a small bikini, exactly, but to the human women who had born babies the more usual way, seeing his mate’s body would have probably raised a few eyebrows. “What were the other mothers wearing?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Similar things. I tried to be _friendly_ ,” she said, as if this was a real trial. Which it probably had been. Leah was disinterested in humans. She extended a mild courtesy to the ones attached to their pack but that was about it. He could understand that.

Leah had never been vulnerable, not in this way, and he didn’t like that these irrelevant – to him – humans had hurt her. “Do you want to be friends with them?”

She sighed and slid down the wall opposite him. “Not particularly.” She smiled at him and he knew it was because she liked watching him with their daughter. It was a soft, indulgent expression. His mate wasn’t often soft.

“Then ignore them.”

Leah nodded. “It just would be nice to talk to other mothers. Who aren’t on the internet,” she amended.

He knew Leah had picked up a vociferous forum habit in the absence of women in a similar position in their pack. He winced. “I’m sorry.”

“Not that Sam’s not helpful. Just. Well.”

“Not a mother,” Bran said.

Lotte finished the bottle, her eyes already dropping towards sleep, teat still in her mouth. He put her in the crib and watched her for a moment. Leah pressed herself against his back.

“I’ll come, next time,” he said.

“She’d love that,” which was what Leah said when she also meant _she_ would.

*

Bran reckoned the whole of Aspen Creek heard Lotte’s blood being taken. Leah left the room three times whilst Bran held his daughter, staring forcefully at the ceiling, repressing a powerful urge to kill Sam. The wolf didn’t care about the sensible, scientific reasons Sam was hurting Lotte, just that he was doing it and his daughter was devastated.

It was a reaction Bran hadn’t expected to be quite so potent. He was an expert at controlling his wolf.

Leah came back into the room again, hands pressed to the side of her face. She looked distraught and her hair was in disarray, as if she had tried to tear it from her head.

“There, all done,” Sam said, pressing a little circle plaster onto Lotte’s arm.

Leah whipped Lotte from Bran’s arms and started shushing her and murmuring _I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ over and over to her, swaying her from side to side whilst Lotte screamed, hand curled protectively over her head.

Sam pulled the earbuds from his ears, winced, and put them back in. “I’ll send these off,” he said. “It’ll be a few weeks.”

“Hopefully she’ll have stopped crying by then,” Bran mused, gently nudging his wife and child towards the door.

Lotte did, eventually, stop crying and Leah put her down for a nap, then collapsed in Bran’s office, clutching the baby monitor to her chest. “It was actually like he was hurting _me_ ,” she said.

Bran agreed and rubbed his hands over his face. “She won’t remember, if it’s any consolation.”

“ _She_ won’t,” Leah said, darkly. She stood, shaking out her hands. “Is it okay if I go for a run? I need to expel some of this energy.”

“Yes, leave me the gizmo.” He gestured to the monitor and she handed it over before heading off.

He looked at the screen, where Lotte was sleeping peacefully, pink cheeked and, mercifully, silent. He winced, remembering trying to hold her still whilst Sam inserted the butterfly needle into her arm, singing a little song to try and distract her. Lotte’s face had been a picture of baby betrayal.

Then, shaking it off much like Leah was trying to, he went back to work.

*

The other avenue they were exploring was seeing if any of the jewelry Leah had found in the loft had any identifying marks that they could use to trace them back to the maker and then to the original owner.

Charles had, at the time, made some off-hand comment that most of the pieces were valuable only in the sentimental sense – the weight of the gold itself not amounting to much. Leah hadn’t wanted the pieces valued, in any case, just stored for those same sentimental reasons.

Charles had the jewelry released from the bank safe deposit box and then photographed and sent to an appraiser, who confirmed Charles’s suspicion. They held back from showing anyone the other necklace due to its potential power. If it did prove to be the reason Leah had been able to safely deliver Lotte, they didn’t want a digital image of it in circulation.

The silverware, however, had a story to tell.

Charles passed over a print-out of a photograph, then a blown-up illustration. “That’s a family crest. It was on the base of one of the silver platters, very faint.”

Bran sat back. At the time, Leah’s unloading of the loft had been a domestic chore he hadn’t put his mind to – occupied as they had been with the Hardesty witches. She had organized most of it, as she did most things to do with the house and the pack. He had been singularly uninterested in silver candlesticks and spoons and hadn’t thought to look.

The crest in the photograph was a wolf’s head.

“Of course it’s a wolf,” Bran sighed. There was an inscription in a ribbon underneath the wolf. “ _Vis unita fortiori_.” In Latin, it could mean a few things. _United strength is stronger_ , perhaps. Or _Power increased by union._ Union of human and wolf? Bran wondered.

“The guy I’ve been speaking to at the College of Arms in the UK,” Charles paused for effect, “has identified this as part of the coat of arms of the Lowndes family, of Cheshire, England.”

Bran held up a finger. “We need my wife for the rest of this conversation.” _Leah? Do you have a moment?_

After a few minutes, his mate appeared, Lotte on her hip. She gave Charles a passing whisper of a smile as Charles automatically made faces at his sister, who responded by making her excited sound, bouncing up and down in Leah’s arms. “What is it?”

“Charles,” Bran said, inviting his son to speak.

Charles repeated most of what he had told Bran. “Does the name sound familiar to you?”

He needn’t have asked. Leah was already smiling. “Yes, it is does. I can’t be more specific. But it sounds really familiar so maybe it really was my father’s name. Oh, _well done,_ Charles.”

His son was not immune to the praise, rare as it was given by Leah, and he smiled. He tipped his head in thanks and then gave in and held his arms out for Lotte. “It really wasn’t too difficult,” he murmured, as his sister was passed to him, little arms lifting expectantly. His daughter had become quite used to being passed around the pack but she very definitely had her favorites – Anna and Charles being two of them. 

“Have you heard of them? Can we find out anything about the family? If they’re still alive in Britain? If they were werewolves?” Leah asked Bran, questions falling excitedly from her lips, eyes bright.

At this, Bran grimaced. “There is a slight problem with that.”

It dawned on Leah almost before he had said it. She groaned and dropped into the second chair in front of his desk. “Oh. _Arthur_.”

Yes. Arthur Madden. Their best resource for the kind of in-depth history they required of the werewolves of the British Isles was no longer. What’s more, the territory was currently a hotbed of in-fighting and pack disputes. Arthur’s original pack had split into three and one of the French packs had apparently also started building a base in London, the original home of Madden’s pack.

They had no ‘friends’ in the British Isles any more and now would not be the time for the Marrok or his family to make a flying visit, no matter how innocent the reason. 

“I’ve started some balls rolling, in the human world. Parish records and the like,” Charles said, bouncing Lotte so that she gurgled and grabbed at his long hair. “I think we should be able to find when he was born, given we have his first name and surname now.”

“Is there no one in Europe who can help us?” Leah asked, plaintively. “What about Juste? Maybe he’d know someone we could ask?”

“Why don’t you ask him,” Bran said, thinking that the possibility was slim. The European packs of the time hadn’t exactly mingled. Chastel wouldn’t have allowed it and Arthur had jealously ensured his was the only name that anyone knew in the British Isles, with a few, minor exceptions.

“All right,” she said, jumping up with alacrity to go and do just that. She held out her arms. “I’ll take her.” 

Charles handed her back, with obvious regret, kissing Lotte’s cheek. “Let me know if you want us to babysit again. Even if it’s just to give you a break.”

“We will _definitely_ take you up on that,” Leah said firmly, surprising Bran. After their trip a few weeks ago, he’d assumed she wouldn’t be leaving Lotte with anyone for some time. But she gave him a flirtatious look over her shoulder as she left his office, which faintly blindsided him.

“Oh,” Bran said as it dawned on him what she meant. He looked at his son with newly appreciative eyes. “How about this weekend?”

Alarmed, Charles pulled back in his chair. “Ah. I’ll get back to you on that.”

“You do that.”

*

Bran had great plans for their baby-free weekend, which wasn’t to say that he didn’t adore Lotte, the daughter he had never dreamed of but now couldn’t do without. Didn’t cherish seeing his daughter’s face when she woke first thing in the morning, didn’t enjoy giving her a bath or feeding her or playing with her or watching the myriad expressions that crossed her beloved little face.

He made this clear once they had waved goodbye to Anna and Lotte, as he picked Leah up and carried her upstairs.

Leah ‘mmm’d distractedly and peppered his face with kisses. “A full night’s sleep might be nice, though.”

“That’s true,” he said, tossing her on the bed and removing his T-shirt, though he had no intention of getting a full night’s sleep that night. Leah started wriggling out of her jeans, eyes never leaving his. He realized, suddenly, what they were doing. “Wait.” He laughed, pulled her back up into his arms.

“What? Aren’t we having sex?” she said bluntly.

He kissed her. Properly. “Yes. But _slowly_.” 

“Oooh,” she laughed, winding her arms around his neck and brought his head back down to hers. “Like a _vacation_. Gotcha.”

Bran remembered with amusement he had once, quite early on in their relationship, decided he wouldn’t allow himself to protractedly kiss Leah. Kissing was intimate, something you did with the woman you loved, after all, and, if not, it was nothing more than a prelude to the main act. It was a rule he had set himself and almost immediately cast aside within weeks of their mating. His mate had a lush mouth and a wicked tongue; it seemed a shame, then and now, to not dedicate time to this. Not when they had the time.

“You don’t have to fly somewhere next week do you?” she asked, panting. They were, by this point, still mostly dressed, though she had her legs wrapped around him, hips moving insistently against him. Her mouth was red and swollen.

He ground against her, relishing the shooting sparks of anticipation, and kissed her neck. “No, why?”

“No reason,” she said, pulling his hair to direct his mouth to hers again. Their remaining clothes came off shortly after that and then there was no more conversation.

He woke up, on the floor, just before midnight. “That’s the doorbell,” he said.

Leah leaned over the mattress. “How did you get down there?” she asked first. “And what?”

“Doorbell,” he repeated. He pulled on his jeans.

“ _I knew_ _it_ ,” she hissed behind him, scrabbling to get dressed.

He knew before he reached it that it wasn’t Anna or Charles, with a Lotte emergency, which had been his first thought, ridiculous though it was. Obviously, they would have called. Indeed, he suspected he might have just _known_. Instead, it was Juste with the hand on the shoulder of a wolf Bran thought was vaguely familiar. “Moran,” he said, the name coming to his lips.

Leah leaned over the stair rail. “Juste?” she called. Leah liked Juste, more than just because he was less dominant than she.

“Sire, I believe this gentleman might be able to help with your questions regarding the British werewolves.”

Bran blinked. “How diligent of you, Juste,” he said, mildly.

Moran grumbled, averting his eyes. “Isn’t it just.”

Leah came to his side and between the stairs and the doorway she had somehow managed to tame her bed-head. Nothing could be done about the fact that everyone currently standing in the doorway could smell that they had spent the last few hours enthusiastically having sex, however. 

“I don’t know you,” Leah said, frowning at Moran. A smile broke over her face, revealing sharp white teeth. “But please come in.”

*

Since it was midnight, Leah offered their guests a hot beverage or perhaps _digestifs_. Bran saw devilry in Moran’s dark eyes when he suggested a Negroni but his mate didn’t even blink. “Certainly,” she said. “Juste?”

Juste smiled at Leah. “A cognac would be delightful.”

Whilst Leah fixed drinks in the kitchen and potentially Googled what a Negroni was, Bran fixed his attention on the slim, youthful looking man who was seated on the couch. He had reddish-brown hair and unusual light-brown eyes, almost the color of a natural wolf’s.

“Moran, it must have been nearly three hundred years,” Bran said, lightly.

Moran – or, as he was once called, Ó Móráin – was an art thief and a lone wolf. Charles had followed his career with some interest, often forwarding articles to Bran with the title ‘Him again!’

There was nothing expensive in their house, though Bran did have a Picasso currently leaning up against one of his bookshelves, but he wasn’t actually thrilled to have a notorious thief eyeing their security. For they did have extensive security, for the protection of their living occupants rather than the inanimate. In the last months of Leah’s pregnancy, she had obsessed about the security of their property.

“Has it been that long. Doesn’t time fly,” Moran said in a monotone.

Bran gathered that Juste had rather compelled Moran to appear. He wondered how. And how he had found him so quickly. He gave Juste an appraising look. Perhaps the network of the European wolves in Northern America was more connected than he thought.

Leah arrived, carrying drinks on a tray. She presented Moran with his Negroni and Juste with his Cognac, bending over to place the drinks on coasters. Bran noticed the precise moment Moran realized she wasn’t wearing a bra.

“Charles is a big fan,” she told Moran.

Moran thanked her, manfully raising his eyes from Leah’s breasts. “That would be… Charles Cornick?” he said, swallowing.

“Yes,” she said, brightly, as if she hadn’t just mentioned one of the werewolf bogeymen of their world. She sat down next to Bran but fixed her big blue eyes on Moran. “Big fan. Particularly that big deal in the 60s in Italy. What was it?”

“Caravaggio’s Nativity,” Bran suggested, naming one of the most significant unsolved art crimes in history.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. That was a couple of Mafia guys with razors,” Moran said, taking a sip of his drink, unconvincingly covering a small smirk.

Leah beamed. Bran was beginning to feel that Charles wasn’t the only ‘fan’.

He supposed this feting had the effect of relaxing Moran, who now didn’t think he was about to be— well, he wasn’t sure what Bran thought he was going to do. Arrest him on behalf of art lovers everywhere? Bran couldn’t care less, provided Moran didn’t get caught. Even if he did, they had protocols in place to ensure a werewolf didn’t stay in prison for very long.

Juste, thankfully, put everyone back on course. “Moran was in Britain until the 19th Century and I recalled he has a very good memory for names.”

“I’m interested in the Lowndes family,” Leah said and, yes, Bran thought, she was definitely flirting. Just a little. The angle of her body, a subtle tilt to her head. Her eyes were invitingly big. 

He wished he’d asked for a drink now.

“Lowndes?” Moran frowned. “Lowndes.”

“In Cheshire,” Lead added, smile slightly dimming.

“Oh, you mean _Lowndes_ ,” he laughed, pronouncing it _Loans_. “Yes. One of the early losses to Madden’s fervor. Killed them all, I think, except one boy, who escaped.”

“They were all werewolves?” his mate pressed.

“Yes. Most of the packs in Britain were families,” Moran explained, as if the wife of the Marrok might not possibly know that.

Leah, recognizing she was being patronized, bared her teeth a little and Bran took over momentarily to give her a break. “Do you happen to recall his full name?”

Charles’s Parish records search had found several Jasper Lowndes stretching over two-hundred years – Jasper being Leah’s father’s first name. 

“Hmm.” Moran took a bigger sip of his Negroni as he thought. “This is very good, by the way,” he said, twinkling at Leah.

Bran gave in and put his hand on his mate’s thigh. It was expected, anyway, he thought.

“Thank you,” she said, with a coquettish smile.

He squeezed his hand on her leg. _Enough,_ he told her. She leaned back so their arms were touching, as ever pleased with his jealousy.

Juste watched this interplay with interest. Bran knew their pack found their relationship fascinating. At least now, it was positively so – before it had made them uncomfortable.

“I don’t remember his full name. But I know he came here – it was the only choice, when the only other option was Chastel, who was comparatively worse.” He frowned, sipped his drink again. “Was it Jasper? Yes. That sounds right. He became part of the pack in Massachusetts, I heard.”

This was new information. “Which one? Massachusetts Bay?” Leah suggested, eagerly. The locations of their packs had shifted much as America had structured and re-structured itself over the centuries. 

“Mmm, it was around that area, then. Don’t think he stayed long. Different way of life here.” At this, Moran exchanged a glance with Juste.

“Good or bad?” Bran asked mildly. He held up his hands when both looked alarmed at the request for critique. “Genuine interest.”

“Fewer rules here, back then,” Moran said carefully.

“Dog eat dog,” Leah murmured.

“Just so. But it changes more rapidly here.” Moran toasted Bran. “For the better, of course.”

Bran showed his teeth. “Of course. Who was the Alpha of the Massachusetts Bay pack, do you recall? Janssen? There was one before him - De Lange? Peters?” he supplied, listing three men he had known or known of.

“De Lange,” his mate said, answering for Moran. She turned her big blue eyes on him, triumphant. “It was _De Lange_.”

“That’s the one, Madam Marrok,” the thief said, finishing his drink, ice clinking in his glass. “Anything else you have need of? Only I’m due in Seattle tomorrow morning. A little bit of business with Angus.”

Bran knew that nugget was deliberately dropped. He didn’t rise to it. What Angus got up to was his business.

He turned away from Leah’s gaze, knowing she wanted to say something to him. De Lange had been Alpha of the Massachusetts Bay pack before Bran had arrived in America and for a while after. They had never met – Bran had not spent much time on the more populous east coast until he had started searching for a new mate - but he had heard of him. Under De Lange, they had been a bloodthirsty pack, forever seeking ‘vengeance’ for perceived crimes. He recalled being placidly pleased when De Lange was superseded by Janssen.

“You may go,” Bran told the thief. “Juste – would you be so kind as to escort your acquaintance out.” _Out of our territory_ , he added, mentally. _And come see me late tomorrow morning._

Juste half bowed and stood. “Certainly, sire.”

Bran had long given up on trying to get him not to call him that. He and Leah saw their midnight guests to the door and this time as soon as the door closed, she pounced on him for a different reason. “My mother’s name was De Lange,” she whispered eagerly. “I _remembered_.”

He laughed at her joy and leaned back so her feet left the ground. Of _course_ she would be a De Lange.

She kissed him. “I am _very_ awake now,” she told him, tugging him towards their stairs.

*

With a groan, Bran sat up in bed, only an hour or so later.

“What now?”

“The necklace,” he said. “If it does what we think it does, it’s _priceless_.”

His mate gasped. “And we’ve just let a world class thief into our home.” Leah scrambled up. The jewelry box was on her dressing table in her room. She returned, the necklace in her hand. She put it on. “This’ll do for the time being.”

Bran hesitated. She made a very fetching vision wearing nothing but a gold necklace, no question, but he questioned the wisdom. “Ah, Leah…”

“Oh, _now_ you’re nervous.” She snorted and climbed back into bed, punching her pillow into shape and turning her back on him. “Don’t worry. _I don’t think it’ll work_.”

*

“Isn’t she a little young for this?” Bran asked, feeling ridiculous as he held up a flash card. He glanced at it. “Apple.”

Leah lolled at the other end of the couch, flicking through a magazine. “Not according to the articles I’ve read on the subject. She’s going to be a genius.”

Bran held up another card with a picture of a banana. “Banana,” he said.

Lotte made no discernable expression of understanding or recognition, just gazed at him happily, holding her feet. She was drooling a little.

“Car,” he told her, next. He glanced at it again. “Probably a Ford.”

The following card was a dog. He frowned and presented it to her. “Dog. _Canis lupus familiaris._ Domesticated sub-species of _Canis lupus_ ,” he qualified. He leaned forward to whisper. “We dominate them.”

He noticed she was missing a sock. She was always missing a sock. They kept the house quite cool because werewolves ran hot, but human babies did not and they were forever putting more clothes on her and monitoring her temperature. He heard ‘do you think she’s cold?’ at least once a day. Socks were always a problem. “Where’s your sock, darling?” he said, tweaking her toes to see if they felt cold.

She chuckled. He tweaked her toes again and got the same response. This went on for some minutes, because it was entrancing, and he found himself the subject of one of Leah’s many videos.

“That is an illegal iPhone,” he reminded her, sternly, as he did each time he caught her using it. “When Charles finds out he _will_ be furious.”

“It doesn’t even have a SIM card and we don’t have Wi-Fi,” she replied, blithely ignoring him and smiling fondly down at the screen. He could hear her replaying the footage, the capturing of Lotte’s joyous laugh. “I’m using this one for the monster cave.”

“What – oh,” he said. Naturally, she had given their sub-conscious manifestation of the berserker – harbinger of death - an easily accessible name. And naturally, his forward thinking mate planned to meet him again.

“Happy thoughts,” she reminded him, as if he needed it.

“I remember.” Not wishing to dwell on this, and the very real potential that she could have been trapped there had she not had those happy thoughts, Bran went back to the flash cards, working his way through to ‘Piano’. Lotte patiently pretended to be interested. He didn’t spend as much time with her as Leah did; he was a novelty to her.

“You should know,” he said, conversationally, as he had been meaning to bring this up, “that I can hear you now. When you talk to me.”

Leah looked up from her magazine. The small V in between her eyes cleared after a moment. _Like this?_ she asked, sounding tentative.

 _Like that,_ he replied.

Since he hadn’t – rare for him – planned this conversation, he didn’t have her expected response mapped out. He felt for sure it wouldn’t have been what he got, however.

“Interesting,” she said, going back to her magazine. 

Bran went back to the flashcards, surprised that her reaction was so muted. He would have thought she’d be happy with this development as it mirrored the mating bonds of others.

“Queen,” he said to Lotte firmly. He looked at the illustration on the card. “I don’t know which one. She’s blonde so maybe one of the Nordic ones? No, I think they’re all brunette. Or were. Is there a blonde Spanish queen? I’m really not well versed in Royalty, Lotte, I do apologize.”

He was on ‘V for Violin’ when Leah sat up, closing her magazine. “Is it just me? Not anyone else?”

“Just you.”

Lotte reached for the violin card and he gave it to her. It immediately went into her mouth so he wrestled it back out, which led to some vocal complaints. He gave her the set of plastic teething keys as a consolation prize and a little sleight of hand had the card disappearing from her sight. “I think the mating bond is creating work-arounds. For you,” he added, recalling that the avatar she had spoken of tried to protect her.

“You haven’t tried to stop it?”

He shook his head. “I don’t want you in my head; you wouldn’t enjoy it. But this seems useful. If it was a gift we’d had before, I would have tried to isolate it.”

Leah nodded, her blue eyes staring off into the distance. “It’ll take time for me to adjust.” At his questioning look, she smiled and clasped her hands on her knees primly. “Sometimes I don’t say very flattering things to you.”

“Ah,” he said. He grimaced. “I can imagine.”

“How far away do we have to be from each other?” she wondered.

Since Lotte’s attention was very focused on shoving the plastic keys into her mouth and gumming them, Bran gave up on the flash cards and swooped her up into his arms. “Let’s test that out, shall we?”

*

Sam dropped by to deliver the expected news that there was nothing abnormal in Lotte’s blood work. “She’s definitely genetically yours. And she’s O-positive, like her mother. So that’s helpful,” he added. “How goes the other avenue? Did you track down Leah’s maternal line?”

They had. It had been reasonably easy, since the current Alpha was a direct descendant of the De Langes and unreasonably proud of his heritage – namely that he had been able to claw back the pack from the Alphas since then. Bran had foisted the conversation off on Charles so that he didn’t have to endure the tedium of the discussion. “Her mother was Lysbeth de Lange and she married one Jasper Lowndes in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1767.”

“So she was a werewolf.” Sam’s expression was anticipatory.

“She was indeed.”

“A werewolf female who also had a child.”

“Presumably.” Bran, who needed something to do with his hands and didn’t care that Sam knew it, unnecessarily tidied his desk. “Certainly Leah was born _after_ that. Apparently De Lange has some photographs of his family from the 1700s and is ‘digging them out’ for Charles.”

“You’re joking. What was the story Charles gave for this bizarre interest in De Lange’s family history?”

Bran winced. This, too, had been part of the reason Bran had delegated. “Anna is apparently doing a project for a college course on Dutch settlers in America.”

His son laughed. “Does she know that she’s been sacrificed for this cause?”

“I sincerely hope so.” He hadn’t asked because it gave him plausible deniability.

Sam shook his head, gazing past Bran’s shoulder out of the window. “Da, this is extraordinary. I cannot believe… did you have _any_ idea?”

“ _No_.” Bran scowled. It was annoying. “And don’t get your hopes up,” he told him, not for the first time, though he knew it was useless. Sam’s hopes had been ‘up’ since the moment Leah had told him about her home pregnancy tests. Those hopes had rocketed to the moon at the first ultrasound and they probably left their solar system the first time he had held his baby sister. 

Seeming to see that Bran’s direction was erring into concern for his emotional well-being, Sam cleared his throat and held out his hands as if to say _I’m okay_. “I’ve been thinking about the half-wolf thing,” he told him, shifting in his chair with the change of topic. “Perhaps we should do more physical tests, given the blood tests revealed absolutely nothing abnormal whatsoever.”

“Nothing involving needles, I hope.”

“No. I could devise some hearing and strength tests. Maybe some co-ordination ones. We could test her every few months, see if there are significant changes beyond those expected for a growing infant.”

Bran shrugged. “Sounds fine. But let me speak to Leah.” Decisions about their daughter were made together; he had learnt that very, very early on. Being ‘high-handed’, as he was regularly accused, led to a cold front.

“Fine. She is noticeably quite advanced, you know, in terms of motor skills. She learnt to sit up quite early, she’s already crawling.” Sam shrugged. “But some babies just are advanced so it’s hard to tell. Charles spent most of his first year stubbornly sitting on his butt, from what I remember.”

Bran, of course, didn’t remember this, to his eternal shame and regret. His mother would have been furious with him.

“He was also _very_ chunky,” Sam reflected, with a brother’s fondness that rapidly turned to mischief. “I should remind him of that.”

*

“London apparently has harpies,” Bran announced, coming into the bedroom.

Leah was putting away laundry in their walk-in closet. She leaned her head out. “London, England, or London Pérez, Alpha of the Lincoln National Forest pack?”

“The latter.”

His mate narrowed her eyes at him. “I see.” She disappeared again. He heard the sound of hangers slapping together. It sounded annoyed. 

“They’re probably not harpies,” he said, dropping onto his bed. Or, rather, their bed, he corrected, since she hadn’t slept in hers in months, even when they argued. 

“Probably not. I take it you will be going to find out.”

“I thought we should discuss it first.”

Leah was – rightly - not convinced by his show of marital accord. She came out with the empty hamper and dropped it by the door. “You mean you thought you’d pretend to discuss it when your mind was already made up.”

Bran smiled. He tapped his feet together. “I would really like to go and see if they have harpies.”

Despite herself, Leah’s lips twitched. She sat down on the edge of the bed. “You sound like a kid asking for ice-cream.”

“Harpies,” he said, pulling her towards him, attempting to convey some of the excitement he felt. “ _Imagine_.”

She sighed and settled her head on his shoulder. “When would you leave?”

“If I go tomorrow, I can use the jet and be back Friday in time for Charles to take it to Washington for his meeting with Cantrip.”

His mate toyed with a button on his shirt and then turned her head to rest her chin on his chest, looking up at him. “Fine. In exchange for what is clearly an entirely gratuitous trip, leaving me home alone with our miserably teething baby, I would like to go and stay with Kara at college in a few weeks. She wants me to come for a weekend.”

Bran squeezed her. “That sounds nice.”

They lay quietly for a few minutes and it was genuinely quiet, as Lotte was asleep having been soothed with a cold washcloth to chew on. Having been quite a good sleeper, she was now unhappy and difficult and they had tried various natural remedies to reduce the pain of her baby teeth growing in.

Then, with unnerving perspicuity, his mate muttered, “I will know if you feed our baby whiskey, Bran Cornick.”

He laughed and her head bobbed on his chest. “Centuries of parents carried out the practice and the human race didn’t end. And you didn’t _feed_ the baby whiskey, you just put it on their gums.”

“Oh, my god, no. I absolutely forbid it. Do you hear me? _I forbid it_ ,” she said, pulling power from him to spit it back. 

He laughed harder.

*

Charles called whilst Bran was standing over the body of one of London’s people, bones picked clean by a predator potentially the size of a half-woman, half-bird-of-prey. It was hot so the body stank. This was the third victim in two days. Bran was rapidly becoming less enchanted by the whole thing.

“I take it I’m flying cattle class to Washington this weekend.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. At least treat yourself to economy plus,” Bran said, stepping away so he was upwind. A trickle of sweat worked its way down his back and he rubbed the sleeve of his shirt across his gritty forehead.

“You don’t _sound_ like you’re in a foul mood.”

“Unfortunately, my wife bore most of the brunt of that last night,” Bran grunted, wincing and stretching. They’d had an argument which had resulted in both of them hanging up on each other in anger. Their follow-up conversation that morning – which he had forced after a restless night - had been terse.

“Yes, she mentioned.” Charles cleared his throat because discussing his father’s marriage had never been one of Charles’s favorite topics. “Look, I wanted to speak to you because Anna received the photo of Leah’s mother this morning – and it is Leah’s mother, it’s like looking at a black and white photograph of Leah herself. De Lange’s not stupid and has cottoned on to the fact that the Marrok’s wife is related to him – expect an invitation to Christmas, by the way–”

Bran groaned. “Fantastic.”

“He’s shared some more details that wouldn’t be appropriate for Anna’s college report on whatever it is we told him she was doing. It’s not great news. I was going to tell Leah but Anna thought it might be better coming from you.”

Bran closed his eyes. “Is it urgent?”

His son paused. “Well. No.”

“Then tell me when this is over. If I’m going to have distressing conversations with her, I want to do it face to face.”

“Fair enough,” Charles said. “Anna was right, then? To speak to you first? I thought you’d think we were managing her, which she hates.”

He shook his head. “If anyone’s going to give Leah bad news, it should be me.”

Bran slogged through the rest of the day as they tracked the creature to its nest and killed it which, given it was the only one of its kind that he knew of, gave Bran heart-ache for all its apparent predilection for Bran’s species.

He and London sat with the body for a while, talking of other old creatures, whilst London’s daughter sketched it for posterity.

“Should speak to the Mexicans,” London said, taking a sip of his beer before pressing the bottle to his forehead.

“I thought you did,” Bran replied. His beer was dangling between his fingers, half full. It was his second.

“Not specifically about mystical Roman beasts. Mostly we bitch about the President.”

Naturally, Bran thought. “I assume if they had a problem with harpies they’d have let you know. I imagine it just hatched here. Perhaps someone brought it over from Greece a long time ago.” He looked up at the nest, perched between the outcrop of two jagged pieces of rock. There had been no eggs in the nest, to everyone’s relief – partly because that would have suggested there was a male harpy and partly because they would have had to destroy them. “I don’t know how long they take to gestate. Might be centuries.”

“That reminds me. Congratulations on the baby.” London leaned forward to click his bottle against Bran’s.

Outside of their pack, who knew the partial truth, Bran had told one Alpha that he and Leah were adopting and the news had spread like wildfire. Mostly because everyone had been astonished.

When the news reached the Columbia Basin Pack, he’d received a text message from Mercedes that had just been the baby emoji and then one hundred exclamation points. He understood that she had also called both of his sons and their wives, to interrogate them, wanting to know what ‘pod person’ had taken over the Marrok.

At some point, she would have to be brought into the secret. She was family after all. Naturally, this was a topic he was wary of broaching with his mate. Leah was not rational about Mercy, perhaps not without justification. Mercy had caused them a certain degree of marital strife.

“How old is she?”

Bran smiled. “Nearly six months. Lotte Elizabeth Cornick.”

“Great name. Great age.” He raised his voice to his daughter, who was crouched at the harpy’s head, looking at her tufted ears. “I remember when you were six months old. Couldn’t talk back to me, then.”

Leila ignored her father – much as she had done for most of Bran’s visit, actually, which seemed to dispel London’s belief that she talked back to him - and carried on sketching.

“This is what happens when you let them grow up,” London said, affectionately disgruntled.

*

It was full moon when Bran returned, grateful he’d had the jet and hadn’t been stuck in a metal tube with over a hundred humans when he felt so agitated. It didn’t help that he and Leah were still having a disagreement over what she referred to as his ‘tone’. Being on better terms with his mate meant the wolf was more settled than he had ever been and the opposite was therefore true, as well.

He dealt with that, immediately, dropping his bag at the door and finding Leah in the kitchen. “Everyone out,” he told the few who were with her, helping prepare the full moon feast – Kara, Peggy and Juste. They scarpered, satisfyingly quickly, but his mate continued to ignore him, shredding brisket in a bowl. There were covered platters all over their counters; it looked like they would have a full accompaniment for the run that full moon.

“I’m sorry,” he said through his teeth, which somewhat spoiled the effect he was going for.

Leah raised an eyebrow at him, unimpressed. “Try again,” she suggested.

Bran pinched his nose. “Three of our werewolves died, Leah.”

“I’m _aware_. I sent my condolences to London and his mate. Arnold was Changed here; I remembered him fondly.”

Bran hadn’t remembered him at all. He tilted his head back, filled anew with regret. “Fantastic,” he said to the ceiling.

This lapse of his memory softened her. She added some sauce from the crockpot to the bowl and then put it aside, wiped her hands. “Fine. I accept your apology for yelling at me when you were angry about something totally unrelated to me.”

He snorted. “Thank you.”

Leah came over and kissed him, lightly, her forgiveness complete and instantaneous. “Do you want to go shower before the run?”

He took her hand. He had missed her. It had been an awful, heartbreaking trip and the beast inside tore at him. “Come with me?”

Leah’s lids lowered and she looked up at him through her eyelashes. “If you’d like.”

Bran liked. He kissed her again, pressing her up against the counter so he could steel the heat of her body and her heart. Tomorrow, he would tell her about her mother but tonight they would run together and she was his.

*

Bran was first up the next morning, which meant he spent some quality alone-time with Lotte, who was flushed-of-cheek and grumpy. He changed her and took her downstairs, rubbed her gums with a finger as he made them both breakfast. In Welsh, he told her all about the harpy, the theories he had of its origins, his sadness over such a rare creature dying at his hands. He found talking about it to someone who couldn't respond oddly soothing.

“You’re a very good listener,” he told her, holding her up so he could get a reluctant smile. He kissed her stomach repeatedly, achieved a laugh, a simple pleasure he couldn't get over.

He took her into his office whilst he checked his emails, standing her between his legs. She bounced and burbled and grizzled and Bran was relieved there was nothing pressing that he needed to deal with. He opened the email Charles had forwarded and printed the photograph De Lange had sent through.

Leah appeared in the door, wearing her running clothes, hair tied in a knot on top of her head. “Is it okay if I go for a run? Are you all right with her for another hour or so?”

“Absolutely. We need to talk when you get back, though,” he said, because it had been on his mind all night.

She frowned and picked up Lotte to give her a kiss good morning and wiped her daughter’s wet chin with the hem of her own T-shirt, flashing her stomach. “Should I wait?”

“No, it can keep. Go. Enjoy your run.” 

“All right.” Leah kissed Lotte again and handed her back, walked off. Within moments, however, she returned and sat down in the chair opposite him, shaking her head. “I can’t; I won’t be able to concentrate. It’s bad news, isn’t it?”

Bran regretted saying anything, then, and spoiling an activity she enjoyed with this unpleasant task. He moved to sit in the chair next to her so it didn’t feel like he was talking to her as the Marrok and sat Lotte so she was facing her mother. Leah held Lotte’s foot. Both socks were currently present and accounted for. “De Lange sent through a photograph of your mother.”

“He has? May I see it?” She glanced at the laptop on his desk, eagerly.

“Of course.” He leaned over to the printer on his desk and picked up the paper. It wasn’t a very good printout but he had asked Anna to send the image away to be printed professionally, thinking it would be something they could have framed for the mantle. Leah would like that. “You’re her spitting image,” he said, smiling. Down to the cross expression, in fact.

Leah held the paper with reverence. “My father always said I was,” she said wistfully.

“De Lange said that his Great Aunt had married Jasper only for him lose her to the Alpha of the Pot Creek pack, thirty years later.”

“Lose her?” Leah glanced up from the photo.

He nodded and bounced Lotte on his knee. The practice of fighting for the ‘right’ to an already-mated female – or, more rarely, a male - had been something Bran had outlawed. It very occasionally still happened and when it did, he dealt with it. Usually, the partner died – it was the sure-fire way of ensuring the mating bond went with it. Sometimes they were lucky and the bond dissolved itself which – to Bran’s mind – meant it hadn’t been very strong in the first place. Some weren’t. 

“By all accounts, your father was nearly killed.”

Leah sat back in her chair, staring at the picture. He could see from the flickers of her expression that she was unsure how she felt about this. Sadness, without question. Confusion. Surprise. Anger. It had been the right choice not to let Charles tell her. Leah wouldn’t have wanted to be so vulnerable in front of him and her vulnerability tended to make her frustrated and angry. Bran could manage that.

“I don’t remember any of this. So – she, what, married someone else? Afterwards?” Her head came up with a sudden thought. “Is she alive?”

He shook his head, dispelling her hope quickly. “What their relationship was, I don’t know. I think it unlikely they were mated. She was dead a handful of years later.”

“How?”

“She was abused,” Bran supplied succinctly. Leah would know what he meant. “Subsequently, De Lange’s great-uncles took their retribution on the Pot Creek pack, wiped out most of them out.” 

His mate’s eyes flared furiously. “Good,” she said. Lotte started grizzling and Leah leaned forward to take her, cuddled her close, getting comfort herself.

There was more. Bran sighed. “Leah, Domingo was one of the Pot Creek pack, years before he joined the Great Plains.” He turned his hands up, waiting for her to make the connection. “The timing seems more than coincidental.”

Leah thought about it and her wolf’s silver flashed through her eyes. “ _Asshole_ ,” she said. She looked at Lotte. “ _He_ knew about me.”

Bran thought of the moment when Domingo’s voice broke over his promise to Leah’s father. “Yes,” Bran said. “I believe so.”

*

“He’s not there.”

“Damn.”

“The cabin’s empty, has been for weeks. Generator’s off. Everything packed up, shutters down and locked tight. Trail goes dead a mile south by a road; I reckon he hitch-hiked somewhere.”

Bran swore again, this time using a more colorful Saxon curse. He had sent Charles to fetch Domingo, this time, to bring him to them. Bran had been in no mood to ‘be polite’ and drop by himself. In his current frame of mind, he wasn’t certain Domingo would have fared well from the conversation. He certainly knew Leah wanted him dead – which was a detail he was going to have to manage.

He had spent the days since Charles had told him the news kicking himself for not devoting more time to studying the werewolves who had lived in America before him. Once he had arrived on the continent, it had taken him several decades to set up his network – this all before telephones and text messages – and all those who wolves had come before, who had died before, he had dismissed as irrelevant. A ‘good to know’ rather than a ‘must’. 

So, too, had he dismissed Leah’s family. Her mother had been human – every werewolf’s mother was, except for Charles’s. He had no need to question that. Her father, a lone wolf, had died a couple of decades after Bran and Leah had mated. Bran had never met him – a deliberate act on his behalf, as Blue-Jay Woman’s family had been very much involved in their lives. It had seemed a betrayal to ‘integrate’ with his new mate’s remaining family and so he expressed no interest in it.

Leah had only seen her father once or twice again before he had died and the man had never chosen to tell his daughter anything about herself. 

Bran wasn’t fool enough to think that had he met his father-in-law, he would have gleaned the truth about Leah, about her mother. Indeed, had the man observed their relationship at the time he would have doubted imparting the news that Leah could give him children would have been top of Jasper’s mind. Not when his own mating had clearly been a love match and Leah’s had, at that time, not been.

“I could try to track him,” his son suggested, not sounding enthused by the prospect.

Even Bran knew that would be a mammoth undertaking involving resources they didn’t have. “No. Come home.”

Leah was in the yard, ‘walking’ Lotte around the flowerbeds, periodically letting go of her to watch her stand gingerly, then catching her before she fell. One look at his face had her knowing the news wasn’t good. “Is he dead?”

“No. Just missing.”

“Oh _great_.” She let Lotte go down onto her hands and knees and crawl across the grass. They followed her, slowly. “Can we find him?”

“Eventually.”

Leah folded her hands across her chest. “In about fifty years, I guess.”

Bran lifted and dropped a shoulder. “I think we can hypothesize what happened. He told his Alpha about a werewolf female who could birth a living child, a half-wolf-child, and the Alpha wanted her for himself. When she didn’t give him what he wanted, because she couldn’t, he killed her.”

“Thank you for summarizing the end of my mother’s life so delicately, Bran,” his mate said bitterly.

She had a point. He touched her hip. “I apologize; that was remarkably obtuse of me.”

Leah adjusted Lotte’s course slightly, so she wasn’t heading directly towards the sharp gravel of their drive. “I would have thought my father nearly dying would have been something I would remember.”

“Perhaps not if it was traumatizing. Or you were very young.”

She nodded and this time he adjusted Lotte, who seemed determined to get stones embedded into her little hands and legs. His daughter gave him a frustrated growl, which he returned loudly enough that she seemed to rethink her actions and headed for the herbaceous border instead.

“Why don’t you fix a date to go and stay with Kara in Missoula?” he suggested, inspired.

Leah glanced at him sourly. “Yes, because I would be such great company right now.”

“I was thinking you could do with a distraction.”

“I don’t need _placating_ , Bran.”

Bran repressed his irritation at what he saw as a deliberate misunderstanding. “I’m not suggesting that. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. It was just something I thought you might enjoy, take your mind off this.” There was nothing either of them could do about the past.

“I’m _not_ leaving her _ever again_ ,” his mate snapped at him. Then Leah bent down, scooped Lotte up, and walked smartly off.

Of course, Bran thought, realizing he had entirely missed the point. It wasn’t her past she was worrying about – it was Lotte’s future. He followed her back into the house. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m an insensitive asshole,” he called, jogging to catch up.

Leah put Lotte down on the soft play mat in the living area with all her toys. “You are,” she told him but her tone was already less ardent. More tired.

“I am,” he agreed, having found repeatedly emphasizing the error of his ways a successful tactic to cooling her down. 

She sat on the edge of their couch and rubbed her face. “This is upsetting and frustrating. And I know it’s all in the past so it shouldn’t matter but.” She looked at Lotte, who was carefully investigating an activity cube that Sam had given her which would ‘test’ her developing dexterity.

“But it does. Because it’s your past and Lotte’s. I understand.” Bran sat on the coffee table and watched her watching Lotte, worriedly. “I have a request to make.”

Leah gave him a suspicious look, perhaps thinking he was about to suggest something to ‘placate’ her. He held up his hands. “Not that kind of request. I have been thinking it would be useful if I knew about the history of the werewolves and packs of the past in Northern America.”

His mate’s expression was baffled. “You know all that.”

“I know some things,” Bran amended. He liked to convey an air of omnipotence but even a mind like his couldn’t truly contain everything. “I know the details and connections of the bigger packs that still survive today. I know about some of the more colorful characters who are no longer alive. I’m beginning to feel that there may be ‘characters’ I am missing or have simply forgotten because I thought they were irrelevant. I was thinking you might be able to help with that. Put together some form of reference for us.”

“I wasn’t born that long before you came to America,” she reminded him, gaze already becoming distant as she thought about it. “But there are a few wolves here who might know.” Leah thought about it some more. Then she smiled at him, warmly. “I could help, I think. I would like that.”

*

Bran had Adam oversee the security improvements to their house and then briefed him on the panic room Leah had decided she wanted, subsequent to the discovery that her mother had been abused and murdered for her breeding prowess. Their argument on this topic had been loud but mercifully brief.

He hadn’t intended to justify this request when Hauptman arrived but even if he had, he wouldn’t have needed to. Adam took one look at Lotte and lost his mind totally, correctly assuming the panic room was for their fragile human daughter.

“She is adorable,” Adam said, all but cooing, making the grabby-hands gesture that everyone in the pack did when they saw the baby.

Leah, who had once deliberately in his earshot referred to Adam as their ‘supermodel Alpha’, proudly handed their child over, smiling triumphantly. “Isn’t she perfect?” Lotte’s mother said, totally lacking in any modesty.

Adam breathed Lotte in deeply. “I could _eat_ her.” His blue eyes opened. “That’s an expression.”

“We know. You’re not the first. It’s less disturbing after the fiftieth time,” Bran muttered. Having predators mock-biting his child’s toes had been a steep learning curve for Bran.

A vindictive look crossed his mate’s face and Bran braced himself for Leah to say something regretful. “Surprised you haven’t started your second family yet, Adam. What’s the hold up?”

Not _so_ bad, Bran thought. She hadn’t made any comment about Mercy. Yet.

Adam didn’t bat an eye. “We’ve talked about it. Maybe when things are more settled.” He held Lotte in the air, swooped her around. Judging from Lotte’s expression of delight and awe, she was the next in a long line of females who had lost their hearts to Adam Hauptman.

Drawing Lotte back down, Adam shook his head in amazement. “Leah, I know it’s not possible, but she is the _spitting_ image of you.”

Bran and Leah gave him shared, tense smiles. This complication had not passed them by. 

_And I thought your genes were strong_ , Leah said to him.

 _Maybe her hair will go darker,_ Bran replied, hopefully, not for the first time. Then again, if her hair color matched his, that would probably be worse.

If Adam noticed anything was off, he didn’t say so, just asked permission to hold the baby whilst he went through the panic room specifications with them. Leah agreed to this with enthusiasm. Adam propped Lotte on his hip, like an expert and an uncharacteristically indulgent expression crossed his mate’s face, watching the handsome Alpha hold their baby.

Bran wanted to roll his eyes, but didn’t. He also found himself restraining a demonstration of some ridiculous territorial impulses, no matter how much Leah might enjoy it. Adam, he reminded his wolf, was not a threat. He didn’t need to put his hands on Leah to show him she was his.

On the dining room table, Leah showed Adam the current plans for the upstairs restructure. “We’re going to move things around a bit,” she explained, describing how they planned to increase the size of the baby’s room by eating into the room that had been Leah’s. “We thought the panic room could go in between our bedroom and the baby’s, use up the remaining space.”

Adam turned the plans around and tapped it. “This is a walk-in closet?” At their nods, he continued. He had taken Lotte’s small hand in his. “Better we hide the panic room within that. Disguises it a bit more. Can you show me the space?”

They went upstairs. It wasn’t often that they had a dominant male wolf in the more private areas of their house and Bran’s wolf was disturbed by it. Comfortable that he was more dominant, of course, but still not liking it.

Again, Bran ignored this and leaned casually against a wall whilst Leah showed Adam the walk-in closet, her room and the baby’s room. Leah was wearing one of the loose dresses she had worn in her early pregnancy that clung to her breasts before flowing out and stopping mid-thigh. It was a dress Bran found deeply appealing because it left her body easily accessible. He had plans for this dress as soon as Adam left.

Adam nodded, when she was done with her explanations, and took a few pictures. “Got it. I’ll have my guys look at the plans and make some suggestions. Should be end of the week. It’ll be very, very expensive,” he added, with a glint in his eye.

“What, no friends and family discount?” Bran remarked. Leah came to lean against his side, which gave him a more natural excuse to put his arm around her waist, curling his fingers under her breast.

Adam bared his teeth. “Since you’re technically supposed to be neither and I’m not actually here, I’m afraid not.”

Bran grunted. His mate held out her hands for Lotte. 

*

They put the necklace in the new safe under the rug in their bedroom and moved the bed back on top of it.

As they adjusted the furniture, Bran brought up the topic that had been most on his mind. “The only way we’re going to know if the necklace truly is the source is by testing it again.”

“Obviously,” his wife said, sitting on the end of the bed.

He sat next to her, leaning back on his hands. “Can we talk about that?”

Leah sighed. “Yes, though, I honestly don’t know where to start. If we test it, and it works, we have our answer but we also have another baby. Do you want that?” She glanced at him, eyebrows raised.

Bran had thought about it. Extensively. “That’s a big conversation.”

She continued, blithely. “Or maybe someone _else_ tests it. And it works. Or it doesn’t work because maybe the necklace is tied to me and my family? So I would have to test it anyway. And potentially we have another baby.” She circled the air with a finger, indicating that the conversation went back to her previous question – whether or not they were prepared to have another child.

“Also possible.”

His mate lay back on the bed, folding her hands on her stomach and turning her head to look at him. “If this necklace – the origins of which we don’t understand – gives _any_ female werewolf the ability to have a child with her mate… does that help us as a people? Or is it just a ‘nice to have’? I can’t tell if I’m being selfish or not with this. I remember…” She stopped to clear her throat and looked straight up at the ceiling. “It can be a great sadness not to be able to have your husband’s child if that is what you want.”

Bran had observed this - most recently with Anna – but he and Leah had never spoken of it. Not in emotional terms and not recently, in any sense.

Before they had mated, they had talked perfunctorily about children, agreeing that they would not be part of their bargain, assuming it would be the case of raising a human child that was not genetically either of theirs. At the time, Leah’s lip had curled. _Children are too fragile for me_ , she had said to him.

In the decades that followed, he could admit he hadn’t dwelled on it much, either. If he had, the memory of her revolted lip curl had him believing it wasn’t something she wanted. And, well, he was selfish enough to think that he had two living sons, both werewolves, and that was enough for him. It had never occurred to him that her feelings on the matter would change.

He remembered this belief being shaken slightly when Kara was brought to live with them – Leah’s reactions had been significantly kinder, more maternal, that he had expected. A direct contrast to how she had been with Mercedes, who seemed to have annoyed her from the moment she and her human mother had come into their lives. But Kara hadn’t been fragile, he had told himself, explaining away this different behavior. Kara was a werewolf.

When Sam placed Lotte in Leah’s arms the first time, a part of Bran had recoiled in fear that such a fragile creature was being cradled in the arms of such a violent predator. But Leah’s protective instincts were there, before Lotte was even born. She had changed, for Lotte.

So perhaps Leah, like Anna, had felt this great sadness that she could not have Bran’s child and she had kept it to herself. Unlike Anna, Leah had not been married to a man who would have suffered her requests to have a child, in whatever form that might have taken. 

“I think, if we could give our women the chance, we should,” Bran said slowly.

There was more to it than that; he wasn’t being benevolent. He rarely was. If, as had been inferred, the necklace allowed children to be born who were more prone to an easier Change, there was an obvious benefit to their people. He hadn’t allowed him to think of this very much as the hope of easing his people’s Change was a mammoth one for Bran. The more who survived the Change, the bigger and stronger their population. You didn’t have to be a genius to see that there was a war coming with the humans and currently the humans had the manpower and technology power to defeat them all.

Leah continued, as if she hadn’t heard him. “If we know that the necklace has that power, can we trace its origins? Would that be possible? And if so, could we replicate it? Who would be capable of doing that? If it’s not fae in origin or witch? You said you thought it was Roman.”

“Yes, more than likely,” he said. He had some theories that were too nascent for him to share, yet. About stories he had heard a millennium ago, about the Romans, and what rituals they had brought to Britain, about the powers of the old gods that had been worshipped and forgotten.

“We can’t hide it under our bed forever, if that’s the power it holds. Then again, we can’t let it be known that we have it. But if it’s just me that can have children, and now potentially Lotte, that is an unspeakable legacy to hand our child. Or children,” she amended, which gave him some insight into her thoughts on that matter, he decided. “My mother was killed for it.”

Hence the panic room argument. “I’m confident I – and you – can protect our children, Leah,” he reminded her mildly. This had been the core of their disagreement, before. It had felt as if Leah had been doubting his strength, which she had never done before. He admitted to being stung. 

Her fingers sought his. “I know that. I’m not worried about _now_. Well, I am, but we can protect her _now_. I’m worried about when she’s fifteen, when she’s twenty, when she’s an adult. I worry about what if she wants to become a werewolf. I worry about if she doesn’t. I worry that she’s stronger than a human child and we have created a hybrid, an anomaly who would never really fit anywhere like I did. That she can’t go to school and make friends.” She paused and raised herself onto her elbows. “There’s a lot more worrying when you’re a parent than I really anticipated.”

Bran laughed at the unexpected change in her tone. “That there is.”

“Do you ever stop worrying about Charles and Sam?”

He considered, then shook his head. “It never really goes away. It doesn’t matter how old or competent they are.”

In the nursery, as if in tune with her parents’ conversation, Lotte started whimpering. Leah sat up with a sigh. “Beginning to think the whiskey thing isn’t totally out there,” she told him.

“Oh, no, even I’ve Googled that now. Absolutely not,” he said promptly.

She laughed and went to go cuddle their daughter.

*

That weekend, Bran followed Leah into the kitchen, having just finished telling her about a rare, cheerful call with one of the Alphas from Montreal. Devereux had called to tell him how badly the French pack's attempts to take over the British Isles were going – information he’d had from Michel, one of the French Alphas. It had put him in a very good mood. 

Bran leaned on the kitchen counter, plucked an apple from the fruit bowl to toss in the air, then was distracted by the baby monitor. Lotte was having her afternoon nap and was sleeping with her arms in the air. “Your father’s family was from just outside Chester, you know. Which was part of Wales for a time. _Deverdoeu_ , it was called.” He’d been there. Many times, in fact.

“How interesting.”

“Which means you’re practically half Welsh. Which means Lotte is nearly _three-quarters_ Welsh.” This, though exaggerated for effect, still gave Bran a real kick.

His wife chuckled and took the lid off the pot on the stove, stirred it. He came over to give it a sniff as well. Chili, he thought. “I should have seen that coming, I guess. No, it’s not ready yet,” she said, when he attempted to try some.

“I must make some Welsh flash cards for Lotte.”

Bran talked to her in Welsh when he could but he wanted her to be able to read it as well. Hopefully, he would have better luck teaching Lotte than he had her mother.

He kissed Leah’s shoulder, bared by her loose top, and then put his arms around her, because this was something he did now and it made his wolf feel small and manageable. “It’s got a rich, exciting history, Chester. A Roman fort. Battles between warring Welsh and Saxon kingdoms. King Arthur fought his ninth battle there. Supposedly,” he added.

Leah ‘hmm’ed, leaning back and reaching up to wrap her arm around his head, stroking her fingers through his hair. “Fascinating.”

Things were just getting more interesting – he was mouthing her neck and had undone the buttons of her fly so he could slide a hand inside her jeans – when they both heard the truck drive up to their house. “Charles,” Leah said, going still.

Bran agreed. He went to meet his son at the door, opening it to find Charles standing slightly behind a familiar, small figure. “Look who I found, asking for you at the motel,” his son said, mildly.

Domingo, twisting his hat between his fingers, didn’t meet Bran’s eyes. “Marrok,” he said. “I’ve come to speak with your wife.”

*

Domingo sat on a hay bale in their pole barn, still twisting his hat and staring down at the concrete floor. Bran, Charles and Leah had surrounded him in a semi-circle which had the combined effect of rendering the less dominant wolf into a quivering mess. It was a tactic they had used before.

“When I came back from Jasper’s, after seeing you for the first time, my Alpha… he knew something was up. He was the kind of man who needed to know everything that was going on in his wolves’ heads, regardless of whether it was his business or not. I tried– tried not to tell him. But he forced me to. He was. Well.” The small man swallowed.

More dominant, Bran thought, not without sympathy. Bigger, stronger. A truly skillful, manipulative Alpha could have plucked the knowledge from Domingo’s mind. The Pot Creek Alpha had clearly preferred brute strength.

“He beat me to near death and then locked me up. We were a small pack and, in those days, size was everything. They couldn’t waste a wolf and just kill me. My Alpha took his second and third with him and came back with Jasper’s Beth. And—and—“ Domingo’s breath came in sharp, miserable bursts.

“I think we can skip the years of torment my mother suffered because of your weakness,” Leah interrupted, icily. As a general rule, Leah was not sympathetic. To her mind, Domingo should have died rather than tell a secret that was not his to share.

“She was strong,” Domingo said, glancing up quickly, a darkling look in his eyes. “But that made it worse. She fought him, every day. But my Alpha was stronger. Angry. When he snapped and killed her, I ran away, knowing I’d be next. That pack was rotten to the core.” He whined and covered his face, rocking forwards and backwards on the bale of hay. “For years, I lived apart until I needed to be with my own kind again and sought out Willet, was accepted into his pack. I thought you were dead, as well as your Pa, I truly did, until the day you turned up.”

Leah scowled. “You never spoke to me. I didn’t know you existed.”

The nervous wolf shook his head. “I couldn’t speak to you. I just couldn’t. I got permission to leave and went to see your Pa, though. I had to tell him what I had done, to beg him for forgiveness.” Domingo sighed. “He couldn’t do that. He gave me a beating but didn’t kill me, either. He told me to watch over you. That was my penance.”

At his side, Leah grunted, demonstrating her opinion of her needing anyone in that capacity. Bran had to agree.

Domingo offered her a small, apologetic smile. “No, you didn’t need that. But I watched out for you, all the same. When this one came for you,” he tilted his head to Bran without looking at him, “I was the one who went to your Pa to tell him. I helped him pack up your things.”

His mate’s eyes flared. “You did?”

Domingo’s head tucked back into his shoulders. “I took Willet’s letter for him to read. Then Jasper packed up some things of your mother’s and his. A couple of boxes. I brought them here myself. It’s how I knew where to find you. But things have changed a lot around here. You used to live by the Church, didn’t you?”

“Did he tell you what was in the boxes?” Bran asked, attempting to avoid another trip down memory lane.

“Heirlooms, he said.” His nose twitched. “Silver, some of it. Funny thing to send to a werewolf couple, I said, but he said you might trade for it. Or give it to your children.”

“My children,” Leah repeated.

“I guessed he meant you’d be able to have babies, same as your mama.”

Abruptly, Leah turned her back on Domingo so he couldn’t see her face. If she didn’t concentrate, every expression that crossed her face was transparently obvious. Bran saw the devastation in the tilt of her mouth and he wanted to reach out and touch her but knew she wouldn’t appreciate his comfort now, not in front of others.

“Did he say anything else to you? Leah’s father?” Charles asked, speaking for the first time.

Domingo flinched. Bran knew Charles didn’t find it amusing that often his wolves feared Charles more than they did Bran. “Nothing, sir. I’m sorry.” He looked at Leah’s back, naked longing for forgiveness in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m really so very, very sorry.”

*

Bran had no choice but to compel Domingo to stay with the pack. As Charles pointed out, he was the only wolf outside of the pack who would easily piece together that Lotte was genetically Leah’s and they couldn’t have that risk. “Though,” Charles mused, “I believe he would keep that secret.”

“Unless someone stronger wanted it from him. Then he’d just spit it out, apparently,” Leah said darkly.

Bran rubbed her back. “We’ll keep him close. We’ll take his measure and I’ll decide if we can let him go or bring him into the pack. It was a tragedy, what happened, no question but not everyone is as strong as you, my love,” he sighed, at Leah’s hotly offended look. The accidental endearment surprised him, as he saw it did her.

She recovered her equanimity quickly and folded her arms. “I don’t want him to come anywhere near me.”

“Done,” he agreed, swiftly. He was reasonably certain Domingo would do everything in his power to avoid her which, in her current mood, would be necessary for his survival. Bran looked to his son. “There’s an apartment over the garage free, yes? He can stay there and we can keep an eye on him.”

Charles nodded. “I’ll take him there now. Explain the rules of this particular pack.”

He left, leaving Bran with his irate mate. Anna was babysitting Lotte – he could hear them inside, Anna singing her a rhyme.

He had an idea. “Shall we go for a run?” he suggested. It was something they used to quite frequently, together, before other demands had taken over. 

She looked at him, crossly, though he could see she was warming to the idea. “Two legs or four?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

His lip curled. “Four, of course.” Bran didn’t run in human form unless he absolutely had to. It wasn’t efficient and, unlike Leah, he didn’t find it particularly enjoyable. He nudged her shoulder. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Oh?”

“If you can beat me to the base of Fan Mountain and back, I’ll make all meals for two weeks.”

The storm on her face broke suddenly and Leah tilted her head back and laughed. “That’s not worth my while. We’ll eat nothing but pancakes for days.”

Grinning, Bran started taking off his clothes. “Starting _now_.”

*

In the morning, Leah put the first mouthful of pancake into her mouth with a smug smile. He shook his head and started flicking through one of her recipe books, looking for inspiration. Out of the corner of his eye, Lotte – who had firmly rejected any further attempts to actually eat anything her mother offered her – was artistically smearing the last of her mashed pear-and-apple over her high chair, face, hair and bib. She would need a wash, soon.

“What about trying again when she’s two?” Leah asked, spearing a strawberry and looking at it thoughtfully.

“Two’s a good age,” he said, hesitating on a page about chicken hot pot. He loved it and the smears on the page showed that Leah made it for him frequently. Not really lunchtime food, though, he thought. Leah had kindly provided him with a piece of paper and a pencil, to make a 'meal plan' for the week. She had volunteered to go to the grocery store for whatever he wanted. He jotted 'chicken hot pot' down for the evening with a question mark next to it.

“It would be nice for Lotte to have a little brother or sister,” she said, gazing at their cheerfully sticky daughter. 

Bran agreed. “In his own way, Sam has always been quite fond of Charles.”

“And Charles just about tolerates Sam.”

“ _Everyone_ just about tolerates Sam,” Bran joked, knowing it would make her smile, which it did. 

Two wasn’t so far away, he thought. He had already spoken to Charles, tentatively mooted the idea that Anna could also be their test subject. The conversation had made Charles wince; he was worried about it failing, about Anna’s hopes. He said he would talk about it with her and they would think on it. Bran suspected Anna would be keen to try, even if there was a significant chance of failure.

He would need to speak to Sam, of course. Set up a study methodology. Sam had theorized that the necklace was only ‘active’ under certain parameters – the woman would have to be in the right place in her cycle, would have to feed it her blood, shouldn’t Change whilst trying to conceive, and the full moon needed to be far enough away that fertilization could take place. A series of coincidences meant Leah had met these conditions in a way that made Bran wonder whimsically about higher powers looking down on them.

It would be useful, as well, to have a witch observing this process and the only viable one was the Seattle witch. But Moira meant Angus which meant spreading the information beyond the family, which Bran wasn’t prepared to do. Unless he could hire her on a private basis, sign a confidentiality agreement… she wasn’t exactly subject to the same rules that Tom was, being a witch, but he knew he was splitting hairs, there. If Tom knew what she was doing, then Angus would.

Well. He had time to think on it.

Leah took a sip of her tea, watching him flick through the recipes. She took pity on him. “I’d love hot dogs for lunch.”

He looked up, in relief, and slammed the book closed, which made Lotte jump, her mouth widening into a surprised ‘o’. “Sorry, _cariad bach_ ,” he said to her. To Leah, he said, “I think I can do that. And we’re having pizza for dinner.” He’d drive to the good pizza restaurant, take Lotte with him. He wondered if it would be possible to get take-out for the whole of the two weeks.

Leah fluttered her eyelashes at him in an exaggerated fashion. “Maybe you’d like to make me a dessert,” she suggested, perhaps sensing he was attempting to wriggle out of their wager.

“Ice-cream?” he suggested.

“ _Sam_ makes a very good white chocolate mousse.” She touched the point of her tongue to her top lip which he immediately wanted to bite. “Perhaps he’d teach you how to make it.”

Bran crowded his wife against the kitchen island, obediently responding to the cues she was giving him. “I see,” he said, voice low. She was looking at his mouth. “Anything else you think my son could teach me that would please you?”

She twisted, tilted her face up to him. Her eyes sparkled with humor. “Now that you mention it—“

Whatever she had to say, he put a stop to it, kissing her forcefully. She laughed against his lips, twining her arms around him. “What about a salad? Can you even make a salad?” she chuckled.

“That's the boring green thing that no one eats, isn't it?" She snorted and playfully slapped his behind. "I am never making a wager with you again,” he told her, turning his attention to her neck.

"Don't think you're distracting me with this, Bran Cornick. That meal plan isn't going to finish itself and I want to get to the store before I need to feed her again." So saying, his wife disentangled herself and went to pick up Lotte, who needed hosing down.

Sighing for dramatic affect, Bran re-opened the recipe book to the index, scanning under 'M' for 'mousse' and grabbed his pencil, fully intending to seduce with her food. He wondered which of his adult children would like to take Lotte for the night.


End file.
